Written by J.P. Davis, and directed by Tarik Saleh, The Contractor is a new thriller that follows James Harper (Chris Pine), a sergeant who gets involuntarily discharged from the army, which takes away his benefits, including his pension. Now he’s stuck in debt, and desperate to help his family. He does manage to catch up with an old pal from the war, Mike (Ben Foster), and he offers James a way to get him the money he needs, and that is to take part in a contract with a private military force that Mike works for. James assures his wife, Brianne (Gillian Jacobs), that it’ll be a quick and easy job, but it doesn’t quite go that way.
James and Mike get a job from the head of the team, Rusty (Kiefer Sutherland). The mission is to lead a group of soldiers into a secure facility where an alleged radicalized individual is working with pathogens that could potentially cause harm to countless people. While the mission initially goes well, things go haywire pretty quick, leaving Mike and James as the only survivors, and both separated as well. However, James begins to suspect that their group may not be working who they say they’re working for, and that starts to put a target on his back.
The filmmakers here are clearly drawing from a lot of paranoid thrillers from the 70s with this, but with more of a modern twist, and focusing more on the broader military industrial complex. When James realizes that there are more powerful forces at play, and that he was merely a pawn for a scheme motivated more by profit than national security, he has no idea who to trust, and the filmmakers do a solid job at playing with that tension for a significant portion of the movie, keeping you on edge.
As an action picture, The Contractor has enough to satisfy. Jack Gill serves as the second unit director and stunt coordinator, and he’s done work on a number of big blockbusters and action film in the past. His experience definitely gives the action here a much heftier punch than you’d expect from a smaller production like this. A lot of the choreography is captured in big wide shots that follow the actors, and gives a lot of breathing room for these impactful beats. It was definitely a pleasant surprise in that regard, even if I wouldn’t describe the action as revolutionary or anything like that.
The film is also clearly trying to imbue a political subtext here in a couple areas. From the treatment of veterans when they come home to the use of private military groups and the power that corporations can wield if their desires are left unchecked. It has more on its mind than a lot of films of this type tend to do, even if it ultimately feels limited within scope that the film is working with. It’s almost too tightly constructed to give its themes the room they need to really land, but I still appreciate the effort to throw in a more subversive element.
Fans of Hell Or High Water will probably enjoy seeing Pine and Foster sharing the screen together, and they still have that same chemistry here. They work well off each other, and both deliver strong performances, and of course, handle themselves well within the action scenes. Though, this is ultimately Pine’s movie, he spends a significant portion of the film on his own with few encounters with other folks. Though, Eddie Marsan makes a brief and welcome appearance. Pine plays things a bit more understated here, utilizing a more internal performance, one that might seem less exciting at first, but proves to be really effective because it feels incredibly motivated and Pine is able to get a lot across with just a few glances and body language adjustments.
I’m not gonna pretend that The Contractor is anything mind blowing because it isn’t, but if you dig these kinda mid-level action thrillers, aka “the kind they don’t really make anymore,” then there’s a lot to enjoy here. I dug the film quite a bit. From its performances, to the action sequences, and its economical storytelling, it moves really well, and it puts in the effort to make good on everything it needs to in the time that it has, while also offering a little bit of food for thought in the process, which is always appreciated. This might look like a fairly disposable thriller on the surface, but there’s more to it than you’d expect, and on numerous levels too. It’s definitely one I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend, especially to fans of the genre.
The Contractor is now out in select cinemas and VOD platforms.